Strays
by Nancy Brown
Summary: She dreamed him awake.


Characters: Amy/Ianto, Rory  
A/N: Written for **sizeofthatthing** prompt: "Amy/Ianto, dabbling"

* * *

"You dreamed me awake."

The voice is quiet, and sure, and unaccusing. She doesn't turn around. There aren't many people out at this time in the late afternoon, which is why she chose now for her walk.

They seek her out, like butterflies that migrate over great distances to a single island. She thinks of them as ghosts while firmly believing in the solid reality of Rory, of her Mum and Dad. Little Amelia Pond, recreating the world inside her own head, and she brought others back alive in the wake of her fairy tale, and they know her as sure as flowers know the sun.

"I did."

He doesn't ask how. He doesn't ask why. "My family. My ... " He stops. "They don't remember me, this."

She takes a shuddering breath, and turns. She's long past thinking she owes any of them anything. She brought them back to life, and surely that's enough. It's usually enough. But she ought to look him in the face.

He's a little older than she, dark-haired and blue-eyed, the kind of boy who'd be plain until he smiled just for her. He isn't smiling now. "It's hard to explain," she says. "There's been a sort of edit."

He nods. "The timeline reset and stapled itself shut in a different fashion, with certain temporal anomalies left behind. I figured that out."

She takes in his appearance, the rumpled suit and the face too young for the years in his gaze, and she touches his chest without asking. One heart beats under her fingertips, and she drops her hand, disappointment washing over her.

"You thought I was someone else."

She didn't, really, but she hoped. "A friend. He doesn't always look the same, or remember himself properly."

"But he has two hearts," says the young man, and there's a bitterness she can't identify, and a strange sense that he's been here before, confirmed when he says, "I should have known you would be in that particular fan club."

"I can't help you," she says. "Yes, I brought you back. I brought a lot of people back. But that's your life to go live, not mine." The poor ghosts go away after that, the ones who can, and pick up their lives or start new ones.

"My life is gone."

She believes him, in his shabby clothes that used to be fine. She understands about understanding. Too much will kill you as dead as anything. She pulls his head close and presses her lips against it like a mum would. In a way, she's birthed all these people back into the world, and some days that makes her feel good, and on other days, the bad days, it eats at her soul. A few times, she's taken them home like stray kittens.

"Come on," she says, and he walks with her back to the house.

Rory's there, and he gives them both a nod. She doesn't introduce the newcomer, hasn't caught his name, but Rory is as used to this as Amy. He says it's a little like being married to Madonna, but he understands because Rory is full of understanding about the strays and the ghosts.

"He's in bed already," Rory tells Amy. "No fever, I think he's just exhausted, poor thing."

Rory dishes out an extra plate of stew to the man, who thanks him and eats. He's precise and polite and careful, but Amy recognises someone who learned manners over the telly to hide the lack at home, and she doesn't fuss while she eats her own food. Rory talks about the hospital, doesn't ask questions. He's a good man, better than she deserves, she thinks. The man insists on helping wash up and tidy when they're done, fixing them drinks without asking what they like and getting it right regardless.

Rory goes to bed early, and kisses her, and tells her to wake him when she comes up.

"I can't help you," she tells the man, when they are alone. She sits with him, opposite ends of a long sofa and a gulf of existence between them.

"I know."

His hands move towards her like he wants to touch her, but he pulls away before he comes close. Sometimes the ghosts are cold. She presses against him, and feels a moment of resistance before he presses back. "It's all right," she says. "It's going to be all right." She has no idea, of course. Comfort is comfort, in warmth or words.

"Can you undo it? Can you put me back?"

She sucks in her breath. Mostly they ask if she can set things back to the way they were, so their friends and families remember. That's not what he's asking, not with that much death in his eyes. The answer is the same.

"No."

She seals the finality with a sweet kiss, gentle against his lips. He gradually, grudgingly, returns it, mouth parting beneath hers. Her husband is upstairs, and she is here on the sofa with a stranger, his hands holding her arms. Her own hands work under the buttons of his shirt, and work open the zip of his trousers. He's hurting rather than horny, and she fondles him as she might something far more delicate. He makes noises in his throat.

"It's going to be fine," she says, and then his hands are moving across her stomach, and his fingers have found her waistband, and then they are under the fabric of her knickers, seeking and touching.

She arches up on the sofa, electric pulses flooding her. It's good, this simple touch between them. He is lost and alone, and she is the beacon, calling him, pressing her mouth against his shoulder as his fingers and thumb move against her. Her own hand has stopped, and she begins again, a pull and a stroke and a tug on flesh heating quickly to life.

The ceiling creaks above them, as Rory walks across the floor. He's watched, before, but his curious gaze makes the others nervous. Another brush against her, and she sighs loudly, nearly a moan. "Yes, like that," she encourages him, her elbow tiring from its own motion.

This is real. This is life, sparking from the touch.

She will not allow them to lay her down, not one. Hands and mouth, and the slide of body against body, these suffice. Pleasure freely given and taken, pulling touch and heat from the darkness.

His cry is broken when he comes in her hand, like a hawk with a ruined wing. He keeps his own movement against her, sliding one digit into her slickly, and then rubbing that against her clit, and Amy comes in a wave through her body.

"I'm sorry," she says, as she sits half-sprawled in his lap.

"Yeah," he says, without blame.

She makes him up a bed on the sofa, then on a whim, she takes his hand. Up the stairs they go to the little spare room that she hopes one day will be a nursery. There's a child, ten years old, sleeping soundly. "He came yesterday," she says, longing to play with the tousled blond hair on the pillow, knowing it'll wake him if she does. "His mum didn't know who he was. He was cold, and sad, and he found me." She looks at the man. "His life is gone, too."

Amy doesn't play matchmaker. She's had more than enough of playing God. But she recognises a child who needs a caregiver, and a caregiver who needs someone to look after.

Maybe he does, too, because he leans in and kisses her again, chastely this time. "Thank you."

Tonight he'll sleep on the sofa. Tomorrow he will meet the boy properly. By tomorrow evening, he will begin practising the lie that the boy is his son.

It's never a perfect ending, she knows from experience, watching him go back down the stairs. The best she can offer is another beginning, which is good enough for now.


End file.
